


Emancipation

by bobbiewickham



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-23 22:47:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14942822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobbiewickham/pseuds/bobbiewickham
Summary: Azelma looks forward to a pampered life in America, and resorts to fantasies as an escape from her life of abuse and neglect--but she finds that her father's plan to get rich through the slave-trade has implications she didn't consider.





	Emancipation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shellcollector](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shellcollector/gifts).



> Thanks to genarti and pilferingapples for beta-reading this.

Azelma did not like the sea.

It bulged and swelled and rose up to lick the very edge of the ship. Close to where she stood, even! Each high, sharp wave seemed to threaten to wrap round her and pull her over, into the endless sparkling darkness below.

She looked into it and saw nothing at all. But she feared things in it she couldn’t see. In her imagination it always seemed to be bulging with too much. Why else would it bubble and roil like a witch’s brew, and rock the floor beneath her feet?

If Éponine had been there, they could have clutched each other’s hands for support as the ship rocked. If Gavroche had been there, he’d have run around not caring whether he fell or not. If her mother had been there, she would have held Azelma close in her arms and kept her safe from the winds and the swaying.

But nobody was there. It was just Azelma and everyone else on the ship, including her father below deck. Just Azelma. 

When they reached land it was no different, except the hard ground felt as strange to her as the rocking ship once had been. She was alone, with her father and the crowds of New York City.

She didn’t know what to expect. Her father had grand plans for what they could do with the good Baron Pontmercy’s money, which had already bought her one proper dress, better than anything she’d had in years. The plans grew wilder with every change, but finally he hit upon his favorite.

“The black slaves!” He exulted in this on the ship itself, before they made port in New York. “They have those here! And it takes nothing at all to buy, and to sell. I tell you, I’ll be a king. I’ll have my own plantation.”

Azelma had seen black people before, but only at a distance. The thought of black slaves was strange and exciting to her imagination, and the thought of being rich even more so—if she could only believe her father would ever make good. But what could she do besides help him? And it _might_ turn out well. They were rich again, as they had been rich once. Azelma still remembered it, playing with Éponine and the doll. 

“You, my girl, will marry a rich, fine gentleman—a planter of the South.” He smiled then, the crafty smile that meant he had been reading and thinking a great deal.

It seemed _possible_. There was nothing saying it _couldn’t_ happen, after all. So Azelma let herself dream of polished tables weighed down with every kind of delicious food, and silk dresses and lovely hats, and a rich handsome husband who adored her and poured money at her feet, and slaves to wait on her and bring her anything she liked. It might never happen, but at least she could glory in the dream.

Atlanta was the setting for most of her gilded fantasies, once she learned where it was. Atlanta was a city like Paris, busy and lively. But it still had the great ladies and gentlemen of the South in their fine clothes and their elegant houses. Azelma was sure her mother would have loved it. It sounded exactly like the stories her mother had always read. And Éponine! Oh, if only she and Éponine could be there together. She wanted to leave New York and go to Atlanta at once, immediately after landing.

Her father had other plans. “I won’t go there with nothing more than money. They sneer at people with nothing but money, there—they are like that Monsieur le baron, thinking they’re better than us!” He spat on the ground. He always spoke of Pontmercy with loathing. “They think they’re like our nobles, with lands and ancient names. No, I need something better than money. Something they will respect.”

“What?” Azelma asked, but he left the boarding house without telling her.

Their first weeks in New York passed mysteriously, but not unpleasantly. Her father sent her here and there, carrying letters that told her nothing, or else tracking the movements of various people who had come up from the South recently. She learned their neighborhood quickly, through getting lost, and mixing with strange people who spoke no French. But she had enough to eat, and even money for another good dress.

In the middle of her second week, though, a lady spoke to Azelma as she was ambling back from an errand. “Mlle Thénardier, is it?” She spoke in French.

Being titled so was novel enough that Azelma stopped and stared. The lady had dark brown skin, and wore a pink dress so beautiful Azelma wanted one just like it. She was looking very keenly at Azelma—not as though Azelma was doing something wrong and had to be chased out of the way or punished, but as though she badly wanted to talk to her. This was novel, too.

“Mlle Thénardier, I hope you don’t mind my speaking to you.” Azelma opened her mouth, but said nothing, so the lady continued. “My name is Mrs. Mary Southold. My house is right here. Won’t you come in and have some tea?” She gestured at a very fine house at the corner, painted a dark green, with white trimmings.

Azelma had no idea why this lady knew her name, but she was not going to say no to this. An invitation to go into a fine American lady’s house! Even if she did look black, the lady’s dress was soft and shimmery, like silk. Azelma felt she must be rich, and have nice things to eat in her house.

The house was done in pale green and cream, with soft chairs covered in mint-colored cloth, and lace mats on the little tables. Everything looked cool and comfortable. “Please, sit down,” said Mrs. Southold. Azelma chose the seat closest to the door, out of habit, and Mary Southold poured some tea out for her into a dainty cup. 

“My dear,” Mrs. Southold said, very gravely, “do you know what your father is doing?”

Azelma was startled into answering truthfully. “Why, no. I carry messages for him, and--” She was about to say she followed people for him, but stopped herself just in time, remembering that wasn’t quite proper. They had money and would be proper very soon, so she should not confess to things like that. “And that’s all, I don’t know what’s in them.”

At this juncture a girl maybe two or three years younger than Azelma ran in through the front door, and then stopped abruptly. She said something in English—Azelma couldn’t understand all of it, but she thought she heard the words realize, and company.

Mrs. Southold said something in English, and mentioned the name Azelma. Azelma frowned. She hadn’t told Mrs. Southold her first name, she was sure. “This is my daughter Aurelia,” she said, in French, to Azelma.

“Pleased to meet you,” Aurelia said, in French, looking slowly from her mother to Azelma. She paused, looked at her mother again, and added, still speaking French, “Do you know, I think I’ll go to my room and practice my drawing. I haven’t done so in a few days.”

“That sounds like a good idea,” Mrs. Southold said, mildly. Azelma couldn’t help feeling something else was being said, something she alone couldn’t hear.

“It was a pleasure meeting you,” Aurelia said politely to Azelma, before tripping up the curving staircase at the far end of the room.

Mrs. Southold lost no time in returning to the subject. “Your father,” she said, with great emphasis, “is helping kidnap Negroes, to sell as slaves.”

Well, that made sense. Azelma had thought the slave-trading would only begin once they went South, but-- “He must want to have slaves even before we go to Atlanta,” she said out loud. “Why, yes, that explains it.”

Mrs. Southold’s face hardened. “And that doesn’t trouble you at all?”

Azelma giggled. She couldn’t help it. Mrs. Southhold looked so funny and serious, with her mouth primmed up like that! “No, why would it? We’ll be rich, my father says—though of course his great schemes don’t often work as he says they will, but if we’re lucky, we’ll be rich!”

Mrs. Southold now looked furious, and started quickly, as though she was going to lean over and hit Azelma. Azelma couldn’t help flinching. But Mrs. Southold drew a deep, slow breath, and seemed to collect herself. “Have you ever met a slave, child?”

“Why, no.” Azelma spoke softer now, afraid of provoking the strange lady. “We don’t have them in France.”

“Then you don’t know what is done to them.” Mrs. Southold leaned forward, very intent. “Azelma, the slaveowners tear mothers from children, and husbands from wives. If you’re a slave, anyone you love might be torn from you and sold far away, to satisfy a planter’s greed. You work long, grinding days without respite, and with no pay. The slave-drivers flog you till you bleed if you falter. And if you’re a girl, or a woman, they don’t hesitate to steal your virtue, either.”

Azelma felt queasy and angry at the same time. She shrugged. “Well, and what of it? My father beats me if I don’t do what he says. And I’ll never see my mother or sister again. But now, if my father succeeds, we’ll have money, and I’ll have a rich husband who will never beat me.”

Anger flashed across Mrs. Southold’s face again, and again she visibly forced herself to be calm. Azelma wondered if she should run. But all Mrs. Southold said was, “Child. Your father is going to buy a free black man and his daughter, who were kidnapped just outside the city. If you can tell me where they’re being held captive, we can--I can—help them. It’s illegal to kidnap and sell free blacks here, you know.”

This was a strange thought. Azelma didn’t know where they were, hadn’t even been told about this by her father—but she knew she could find out. She could spy on her father, instead of for him. It was confusing to think of.

“Will you do it?” Mrs. Southold was leaning forward again, eyes shining. Azelma felt dizzy, as she had standing near the edge of the ship, looking over the railing into the whirling black of the sea.

Without thinking, she stood up, seeing dark splotches before her eyes. She staggered, hearing Mrs. Southold’s voice as if from a distance, not knowing what it was saying. A dash across the room, and she was out the door, in the street, blinking in the bright sunlight.

Azelma stumbled home, not really knowing how she went. By the time she reached, she forgot the message she was carrying to her father. It took her a few minutes to recall it, and in that time, her father boxed her ears and called her a good-for-nothing nitwit.

She cried that night. Not because her father was angry—she’d seen him angrier. After some time she realized, with some surprise, that she was crying for Éponine, for her mother, for Gavroche. She had not cried for them in all this time. It was strange. She was quick to cry, quicker than Éponine, but she hadn’t cried for her family until now.

The next morning, when Azelma woke, she felt very tired, but somehow very clean at the same time. After a bread-and-water breakfast--for they were still scrimping a bit, and would do so until they made their fortune--her father handed her a note. “Take this to the address on the letter, my girl, and be quick about it. And then find out from the gentleman here where I can pick up the goods from him.”

It was an overly long visit to the gentleman. He liked the way she looked in her new dress, and her father had told her to be sweet for him, so she was still and obedient, and looked out the window as much as she could.

But when it was over, he gave her an address.

He didn’t write it down, so Azelma memorized it, turning into a singsong rhyme in her head as she fled his house without picking a direction. She had traveled three blocks without fully realizing that she was going the wrong way—if she were going to her boarding-house.

And suddenly she decided she _wasn’t_ going to her boarding-house. Not yet, anyway. Before this strange wild courage deserted her, she gathered her skirts and ran several avenues, in the direction of the address, before subsiding into a walk.

The address proved to be a bakery. Azelma slunk around to the back and knelt to peer in through the narrow, barred basement window.

Azelma saw a man, tall and slim and dark, and a little girl with chubby cheeks. It was hard to see clearer than that through the bars and the grubby glass. But Azelma could see their hands were tied. The girl’s head was bent, and her body was shaking. The man leaned closer to her, jerking forward, as if he were trying, uselessly, to put one of his tied arms around her. He spoke. Azelma couldn’t make out the words, but she could hear his voice, deep and low and gentle, but with a quaver she could hear even through the glass.

Azelma rose to her feet, and dashed back, heedless of the distance—not to her boarding-house, but to Mrs. Southold’s.

Mrs. Southold raised her fine, elegant eyebrows to see Azelma, panting and sweaty, on her doorstep. But she invited her in. Aurelia was there, too, reading something by the window. “You can speak freely in front of her, dear.”

Was she truly dear to Mrs. Southold? Not likely, not even with her news. But Azelma was not here to argue, and blurted out the address. “That’s where they are. The man, and the girl.”

“Are you sure?” Mrs. Southold gave her a hard stare.

“Yes,” said Azelma, indignant. “Can you—will you--” She didn’t even know how to finish the sentence. What would they do?

Mrs. Southold spoke to Aurelia, then, in English, too fast for Azelma to follow. Then Aurelia slipped out the door, without any word of farewell.

“My dear,” Mrs. Southold said, again, and in spite of herself Azelma started to cry. She didn’t know why, for she wasn’t hurt. “Now, then, what’s all this? There’s no need to cry. You’ve done the right thing.”

But Azelma couldn’t stop herself. She was no good at stopping herself from crying, even when it would get her in trouble.

“Now, then.” A handkerchief appeared before Azelma’s eyes. “Try to calm yourself.” Azelma took the handkerchief and buried her face in it.

“If it’s your father you’re worried about,” Mrs. Southold said, when several moments had gone by, and Azelma’s sobs had slowed, “I can introduce you to a lady I know. She runs a charity that helps girls find honest work, in respectable homes. They even have a boarding-house, for some of the girls. You could, perhaps, leave your father and stay with them, if you wish.”

Azelma wanted to say yes, with a sudden rush of wanting that left her breathless. She didn’t know what to do with it. She rose to her feet, unsure of what she was doing, and then, following an old instinct, ran for the door.

She stumbled through the streets until she reached the East River. She stared at it until her tears faded and her breathing slowed. The swell and ripples of the river, shining like silver under the sun, seemed a gentler echo of the tumult of the sea. _Éponine should be here,_ she thought, _and my mother, with Gavroche running about somewhere too._ Thinking of them hurt, and she couldn’t stop thinking of them, and didn’t even want to stop. She thought of them, and looked out onto the river, and let it hurt.

With every shift of the water, her breath came easier. When she finally turned away from the river, she didn’t know where she would go next. But her feet took her back the way she came, towards Mrs. Southold’s door. 


End file.
